Gallowgate Flags and Wor Hyem officially merge to take the movement forward.
On Friday 06.10.2017 it was announced that Alex Hurst and Michael Martin, along with the other members of the True Faith team would no longer be associated with Gallowgate Flags (GF). In the wake of this news the remaining members of GF alongside the team behind Wor Hyem 1892 have been in discussions about the futures of both groups.
Firstly, everyone involved in with Gallowgate Flags would like to thank the True Faith team for all of their contributions in helping us create a better match day atmosphere. The help they provided at the beginning of the process was invaluable especially the hard work put in by Alex and the credibility he brought to the group, his small idea and the willingness to act upon it was the catalyst for what you now see every match day. GF has now evolved beyond all expectations and has become more than just creating a better atmosphere inside St James’ Park and that is in no small part due to the involvement of Wor Hyem.
Wor Hyem and Gallowgate Flags have been working together behind the scenes for several months and have brought you the massive displays against Tottenham and Liverpool that have gained worldwide coverage and have been widely regarded as the biggest in English football history. We have therefore taken the decision that the remaining members of Gallowgate Flags and Wor Hyem will be officially merging into one much larger group under the WOR HYEM 1892 name with the continued aim to grow and evolve to greater heights, and return St James’ Park to it’s former glory of having the loudest and most intimidating atmosphere in the British Isles.
True Faith’s involvement in match day activities and displays has been reducing for some time now which has also coincided with the more hands on involvement from WH. We, as a collective have looked to evolve to more than just flags and expand on the original vision. We have been concentrating our efforts bigger TIFO displays like the one seen against Liverpool recently and the pre match activities, mainly the walk to the ground with flags and singing from our unofficial supporters bar, The North Terrace. A lot of praise needs to be assigned to those involved up to this point, whom without we would not have been able to achieve a fraction of what you have seen. A large group of dedicated people have given their time and made all of this possible, those people have designed the displays, they have given countless hours of their free time painting banners and they have given up their weekends to spend them in St James’ setting up the displays. We would like to assure everybody that those people are still going to be involved with the newly merged group in all future displays and we will be bringing you bigger and more ambitious displays. We would also like to offer thanks to Michael Martin for his fundraising during the first 12 months of our efforts.
Dan Lycett, one of the members of the group formerly known as Gallowgate Flags had this to say regarding the merger, “We have been working with Wor Hyem since the end of the 16/17 Championship season and this has seen the massive evolution from simple flag displays to a much more European style of one off Tifo displays and has also been crucial in the start of our much published walks to the match, which in a few short weeks have grown at a huge rate and gained a massive amount of popularity. It was the next natural step for the groups to get together and become one team of like minded people, united by a common set of goals”.
A spokesperson from the original members of Wor Hyem 1892 also had this to say, “Wor Hyem are delighted to continue our efforts with the remaining members of Gallowgate Flags. We look forward to creating more amazing displays and bringing back the noise”.
The newly merged Wor Hyem 1892 will be continuing to raise funds to finance the displays through various different methods, which will include events, donations and merchandise sales and we will continue the work Alex started in being fully transparent with how all funds are used. We also still need volunteers and will be holding volunteer meetings to recruit people that want to help us and become part of our growing family. Against Liverpool we had the largest number of volunteers we’ve ever had and it was overwhelming to see the support we have gotten in such a relatively short period of time. We will keep appealing for volunteers who like us, want to help make match days something special every week.